Susan Smith Facebook ad: “GLP-1 or your marriage?”

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I was 18 months on my GLP-1 when my ex-husband's girlfriend caught him undressing me with his eyes at our son's soccer game. I'm not proud of how good that felt. Actually no. I'm a little proud lol. It was the 8:30 game, the one nobody wants, and I'd been in my folding chair since eight because I'm always there early, coffee in one hand, and for the first time in my adult life I was wearing a tank top in public with no cardigan over it like a security blanket. Dan showed up twelve minutes in with her. Hand on her lower back, doing his little scan of the sideline for people to nod at, the way he does. He nodded at one of the dads. He nodded at the coach. Then he got to me and his whole face just... stopped. Not a glance. A double take so hard I swear I heard his neck complain, and then a third look, slower, the one that started at my ankles and took its sweet time getting up to my face. She saw the third one. I know she saw it because I was watching her watch him, and her smile did this thing where it stayed on her mouth but left her eyes completely. He came over. He had to, we only talk at pickup now, that's the arrangement he set up the day he walked out, and he walked out with one sentence I'll get to. He said "Wow. You look..." And nothing came out. He just stood there with his mouth a little open like the rest of the sentence was going to arrive on its own, and she was standing right there, and I let that silence go exactly as long as I wanted to. Then one of the other dads walked past and said hey, and Dan turned to introduce her, put his hand out toward her like a game show host and said "This is..." Nothing came for that one either. She said her own name. To a man she's been sleeping next to for a year, at a nine-year-old's soccer game, she had to say her own name out loud. She said it a little too loud. I gave him half a smile, the kind you give a waiter, and got back to the game. Here's what he thinks he saw. He thinks he saw the weight. Forty pounds, the jeans from the back of the closet, the tank top, all of it. He's about half right. The other half is the part he took with him the day he left, and to explain that I have to rewind twelve months, to six months into the shot. Rewind twelve months. Six months into the shot, forty pounds down, and I need to give you some context on Dan before you decide he's a monster, because I did marry him and I'm not an idiot. 14 years. Two kids, one house, one dog that died and one we replaced too fast. He was a good dad and a decent enough husband and he'd spent about a decade watching me do Weight Watchers four separate times, keto, the fasting thing, a trainer I paid for two years who got me strong and not one pound lighter, and a bariatric consult I scheduled and cancelled twice. He was patient about all of it in the way that has a little sigh in it. Then my doctor wrote the prescription, and eight weeks later he started touching my waist again when he walked past me in the kitchen. I'm not gonna pretend that wasn't the best part. So. Six months in. The scale kept saying winning, but my shower drain did not. The morning I hit forty pounds down was the same morning it started, and I want to be specific about that because it's locked in my head like a date. I took the Sunday photo, the one I take every week in the same leggings at the same angle, posted it to my group, got sixty comments before I even got in the shower. Then I got in the shower and ran my hands through it and what came out did not look like a normal amount of hair. I stood there with the water going cold looking at my hand like it belonged to someone else. Then I did what every woman does. I rinsed it down, told myself it was one of those days, went and made pancakes. It was not one of those days. Then it was the pillow. A little more every morning, and I started making the bed before Dan woke up so he wouldn't see it. Then it was the car. I started checking my part in the visor mirror at red lights because the light in there is unforgiving and I wanted the truth, and the truth was getting wider every week. Then it was the hair tie. Two loops in month four. Four by month six. You don't notice that happening until you do, and then you can't un-notice it. And the whole time the scale kept going down and people kept telling me I looked amazing, and I'd say thank you with my hand on the back of my head. I did look amazing. From the front. Dan watched all of it. That's the part I need you to sit with. He was in the bathroom doorway the morning I cried over the drain. He saw the bun go on and never come off. He saw me cancel the anniversary photos. Six weeks of watching, and he said nothing, which I thought at the time was him being kind. It wasn't kindness. He was writing something. Because on a Wednesday night after the kids were down, he sat me on our own couch, the one we picked out together, and gave me a speech he had clearly practiced somewhere first, because it had a structure to it. An opening. Points. The only part I remember word for word is the end. "I miss the woman I married. And babe... she had hair." I didn't say anything. I couldn't think of a single thing worth saying to that. He already had a bag packed in the trunk. That's how planned it was. And I sat on that couch with forty pounds gone and a bun on my head and thought, okay. So that's what I'm worth without it. The kids asked where dad was at breakfast and I said a work thing, and my nine-year-old looked at my head and said "why don't you wear your hair down anymore," and I said because it's hot, in October. That's who I became overnight. A woman who lies to her kids about the weather. Here's the thing nobody tells you about being left like that. It doesn't stop when he leaves. He leaves and then he's in every mirror. I'd check my part at a red light and hear it. She had hair. Someone at work would say oh my god you look incredible, and I'd say thank you and hear it. She had hair. I'd take the shot on Sunday night, same as always, and sit on the edge of the tub afterwards with the pen still in my hand and hear it. The scale kept going. 214. Then 189. Then 169. I hit a number I hadn't seen since I was 26 and I didn't post it. I stopped posting the Sunday photo altogether, and the girls in my group noticed, and I said I was busy, and one of them DMed me "are you ok" and I left her on read because what was I going to say. I'm winning? I'm winning and I can't turn around in a bright room? I started running my Zoom calls with the camera off. Told everyone it was my wifi. I started carrying a hat in the car. I cried in a Target parking lot about a hair tie. Forty-five pounds down, thinner than I'd been in fifteen years, sobbing over a black elastic that had gone around four times instead of two. I sat in that car for twenty minutes and then I went in and bought toilet paper like a normal person. And the worst part, the part I still hate myself a little for, is that somewhere in there I started agreeing with him. I'd look at the crown in the visor mirror and think, he's not wrong. That's not her. Whoever that is, that's not the woman he married. My mother came for the weekend and watched me hide under a bun for three days and finally said the thing she'd been holding in the whole time. "Honey. Maybe you should stop that medication." I said no before she'd finished the sentence. I'd waited twenty years to feel like this in my own body and I was not giving it back. Not for him, not for her, not for the hair. If it was a trade, then fine, I'd already made it. So I tried to fix the other half instead. The hair, nails, skin gummies. Three months, ninety dollars a bottle, and the only thing that changed was the colour of my pee. Rosemary oil. Smelled like a roast chicken and washed straight off in the morning like it was never there. The protein. Ninety grams a day, forced through shakes I gagged on at 6am with zero appetite, because that's what everyone in the group says to do, and the drain didn't care. The shampoo with the ridiculous name, the silk pillowcase, the little scalp massager from TikTok. Fifty dollars of nothing. The subscription one, the one with all the ads. Eighty a month. Four months. Cancelled it standing in the bathroom looking at the drain. And then I did the thing I'm least proud of. I swallowed whatever pride I had left, I called my ex-husband on a Tuesday night, and I asked him if we could try again. He let the line go quiet for a second. Then he said, "Call me when you're her again." And hung up. That's the sentence. That's the one that's been living rent free in my head for a year. I put the phone face down on the counter and went and made the kids' lunches for the morning. About a week later my friend Renee texted that she was in the city for three days. Renee and I were roommates freshman year. She's a doctor now, in Sweden of all places, married a Swede, and she is the only person alive who's allowed to tell me the truth to my face. She's also on the shot. Started five months before I did. She's the one who told me to ask my doctor about it in the first place. She walked into the wine bar and I saw her before she saw me, and I'm going to be honest, I hated her for about four seconds. Fifty pounds down. And her hair was DOWN. Past her shoulders, thick, moving when she walked, the whole thing. Then she saw me and hugged me so long the hostess gave up on us, held me out at arm's length and said "look at YOU," and I did the thing, thank you, hand on the back of my head. She clocked it. Of course she clocked it. We got a bottle. I told her about Dan, the couch, the click, and she said a word about him in Swedish that she wouldn't translate, and then she got quiet, reached across the table and touched the back of my head the way you check a kid for a fever. "How long has it been in a bun." Not a question. I said four months, maybe five. She said "and it started right around when the weight really started coming off." I said how did you know that. "Because it happened to me. Month six, same as you. And nobody warned me either. I'm a doctor, I write these prescriptions, and not one person said a word." I said I thought it was the divorce. The stress. Or the protein, I was choking down ninety grams a day. "It's not your protein. Your protein's fine. It's your estrogen." Then she gave it to me in about ninety seconds, and I'll give it to you the way she gave it to me. The weight drops. Your estrogen drops with it. And DHT moves in. She called it the open door. DHT is a hormone that's been in your body your whole life. It's what shrinks hair follicles, a little at a time, until the hair they grow comes in thinner and thinner and then one day doesn't come in at all. Men lose their hair to it. So do we, we just never hear about it. The only reason it hasn't done that to you already is estrogen. Estrogen is what keeps DHT off the follicle, and a big chunk of your body's estrogen isn't made in your ovaries. It's made in your fat. So when the fat goes fast, the estrogen goes with it. She called it the open door. Estrogen is the bouncer standing at the door of every follicle on your head, and DHT's been outside that door your whole life. Lose forty pounds in nine months and the bouncer walks off the job. DHT doesn't even have to push. It just walks in. And the drain is where you find out. "It's not the shot," she said. "The shot's doing exactly what it's supposed to. It's what happens on the way out." I said then why did nobody tell me. Why did nobody tell YOU. And she laughed, not a nice laugh, and said, "Because the whole system is built around one number, honey. Your follow-up is eight minutes and all eight are about the dose and the nausea. Nobody asks about your pillow because nobody is paid to look at your pillow. I'm inside it. I know." "And then you go looking for help yourself and you end up on the gummy aisle, and those companies know exactly who's buying right now. Women on the shot. That's why your feed's full of them. Half that aisle is candy." I sat there with my wine and thought about every Sunday night I'd sat on the edge of the tub with the pen in my hand, thinking I'd chosen this. I hadn't chosen anything. Nobody told me there was a choice. Then she took a pen out of her bag, flipped the cocktail napkin over, and wrote two words on it. Bloom & Bond. "Pumpkin seed oil. It stops the DHT before it ever gets to the door. Saw palmetto stands in the doorway and catches whatever slips past. Two softgels, with your coffee. That's the whole thing." I said that's it? She said, "That's it. I'm on my thirteenth month of the shot and you just hated me for my hair in a doorway. That's it." I put the napkin in my coat pocket. We finished the bottle. She told me about a man in her clinic who fainted at the sight of his own blood test and I laughed properly for the first time in a month, the kind where your face hurts after. At the door she hugged me and said in my ear, "Take it down tomorrow. Just once. See how it feels." I didn't. Not tomorrow. But I kept the napkin. I ordered it in the Uber home with the napkin on my knee, half a bottle of wine in me, before I could talk myself out of it. Ninety days money back, so whatever. Worst case I'd be out a bottle and Renee would owe me dinner. It came on a Thursday. Little brown bottle, softgels, no system, no twelve-step routine on a card. Two with the coffee. I took the first one standing at the counter and felt nothing, obviously, and went to work. Week one, nothing. Week two, nothing, and I checked the drain anyway, every morning, like a woman checking a lottery ticket she already knows lost. Week three I stood in the shower and ran my hands through and looked at what came out and thought, that's less. Then I thought, no it isn't, you're just wanting it to be. So I did it again the next morning, and the next, and by the end of that week I stopped arguing with myself, because it was less. Not gone. Less. After that year, less felt like someone had turned the volume down on a noise I'd been living inside. Week four I stripped the bed to wash the sheets and stood there looking at the pillowcase for a long time. I stayed on the shot the whole way through. Went up a dose in month two, actually, and took it on the edge of the tub on Sunday night without the dread for the first time since the drain. Month two the hair tie went round three times instead of four. I noticed in the car park at work and sat there with it in my hand like an idiot. Month three, red light, visor mirror, same as always. And standing straight up all over the crown, ridiculous, like a dandelion, was a whole fuzz of new short ones. Baby hairs. Sticking up in every direction. I cried at the light and the guy behind me honked and I didn't even care. I took a photo of the top of my head at that light and sent it to Renee with no words, and she sent back a voice note that was just her screaming. That's also when I sent the napkin to my sister. Jen is four months into her own shot. Twenty-eight pounds down, thrilled, posting everything. She'd called me the week before to say she'd noticed a bit more on her pillow than usual and did I think that was anything. I said take a photo of your hair tie and send it to me. Then I sent her a photo of the napkin and told her to order it that night, and I told her why, the whole ninety seconds, the open door, all of it. She's the first woman I ever warned. I wasn't going to let her find out the way I did. Month four I took the bun down at work. Just took it down, mid-morning, at my desk. Nobody said a single thing, which was exactly what I wanted, because it meant there was nothing to say. Month five the hair tie went round twice. Twice. I put it on the bathroom counter and took a photo of that too. Month six I put it up in a high ponytail for the first time since the couch. High, crown out, hairline out, the way you can only wear it when there's nothing to hide up there. My nine-year-old came into the kitchen, looked at me, and said "you did your hair," and went and got his cereal, and I had to go stand in the pantry for a minute. Jen's at month three on it now. She texted me last week, a photo of her hair tie, two loops, with the caption "WTF" and about nine crying emojis. Which brings us back to Saturday. That night my phone lit up at 10:52 with his name on it. I still have him saved by his name. I don't know what that says about me. "Seeing you today did something. Maybe I was wrong." Maybe. A year ago I'd have been in the car before the second sentence loaded. I'd have driven over there in the bun with my heart going like a rabbit. I read it twice, and I put the phone face down on the nightstand, and I lay there in the dark with my hair out on the pillow, all of it, and I said out loud to nobody: Well, sweetheart. I'm her again. And that's exactly why I'm not calling. I didn't get him back. I want to be clear about that. I got something a lot better than him back, and it turns out I never needed him to give it to me. He set the terms, I met them, and the woman who met them doesn't want the prize. If you're on the shot right now and it's working, if the scale is saying winning and you're pulling the smaller jeans out of the back of the closet and someone touched your waist in the kitchen this week, then I'm probably talking to the woman I was a year ago, and I'm the Renee you don't have. Mine started at month six. Renee's was month six. Jen's was starting at month four. There's no warning. There's a drain. You do not have to choose between the body you finally fought for and the hair you've had your whole life. That choice is fake. I know because I didn't make it. I kept both. So did Renee, so is Jen, and none of us came off the shot for a single week. Bloom & Bond is ninety days, money back, no argument. You don't have to pick. Keep the shot, keep the hair, that's it. 👉 https://trybloomandbond.com/products/new-pumpkin-seed-oil-softgels P.S. The napkin is in my kitchen drawer. Jen asked for it and I said no, get your own doctor friend. P.P.S. He texted again at 11:15. I haven't read it.

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